Last Wills Affect Assets, Guardianship & Funeral Arrangements

For hundreds of years, wills have been the basic device used to direct disposition of an estate after a person's death, and despite a trend in many states to use revocable trusts as will substitutes, wills remain a fundamental tool for the estate planner. Because wills are in most cases simpler and shorter documents than revocable trusts, they are generally less time-consuming to prepare and therefore are less costly for the client. A will is ordinarily a better choice than a trust when the estate is small enough to avoid probate administration.

It also remains true that all properly prepared estate plans contain a will, if only a pourover will that transfers to the trust assets that were not transferred to the trust during the client's lifetime.